Epos Now Review

Epos Now is the low-cost, iPad-or-tablet till for small independent restaurants, cafés, bars and quick-service spots that want an all-in-one POS with in-house card processing and no long-term processing contract. The catch is depth: it's a general retail-and-hospitality POS rather than a restaurant-only platform, so reporting and the app trail restaurant-native rivals like Toast and TouchBistro. If you run a single café, a pizza shop or a food truck and want a cheap entry with a flat, published processing rate, it fits. If you run a multi-unit group that lives in its reports, look elsewhere.

Epos Now is a general-purpose POS — it sells one platform across retail and hospitality — not a dedicated restaurant system.

What Is Epos Now #

Epos Now is a cloud POS and payments platform built by Epos Now, an independent UK company founded in 2011 in Norwich by Jacyn Heavens, who is still founder and CEO. The company serves businesses across more than 70 countries, with US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland storefronts. It is not owned by a larger POS conglomerate.

The product spans retail and hospitality from the same platform. The hospitality configuration adds table service, coursing and a Kitchen Display System on top of the core till, and the company markets it as an all-in-one system that runs the till, inventory, staff and customer relationships from one device, with its own card processing layered on. It's pitched at small and growing businesses — independent restaurants, cafés, bars, pizza shops, food trucks and quick-service or delivery-led operations.

Features #

POS and table service #

The restaurant build runs table service with coursing and built-in customer-relationship management, so a server takes orders at the table and the check carries guest detail through to the kitchen and the day's sales. It runs on Epos Now's own tablet kit or on an operator's existing iPad, which keeps the upfront hardware decision flexible.

Kitchen Display System #

Orders fire from the till to the kitchen in real time. The KDS groups tickets by course and order type, so the line sees dine-in, takeout and delivery sorted rather than stacked in one queue — the mechanism that cuts prep confusion and ticket times during a rush.

Inventory and stock control #

Stock control runs down to the ingredient level, with automated purchase orders and low-stock warnings so a manager reorders before the kitchen 86s a dish. The same data feeds cost and profit calculation, which is where food-cost tracking lives for an operator watching margins.

Reporting #

Real-time sales, inventory and staff reporting covers daily, weekly and monthly sales, with franchise and multi-site roll-ups for operators running more than one location. Reporting breadth is here; reporting depth is the recurring complaint — see the honest read below.

Payments #

Epos Now Payments is the in-house card processor, quoted at one flat rate across card types including American Express. Customer refunds are free, and the company states no hidden fees, no PCI-compliance fees and no additional authorization charges. Card surcharging lets an operator recover up to 3% of processing costs at the point of sale. Larger businesses negotiate custom processing rates by quote.

Hardware #

Own-brand card machines come in three shapes: Air (light and portable), Pro+ (a portable all-in-one with the POS and real-time reports on the device) and Link (a stationary unit with real-time reports). The flagship "Complete Solution" tablet kit bundles the hardware, and the platform also runs on a standard iPad, so you're not locked to fully proprietary gear.

Integrations #

The app marketplace connects the pieces most small kitchens stitch together. Epos Now syncs sales and finances to QuickBooks and Sage for the accountant, pushes reservations through OpenTable, runs staff scheduling with Deputy, drives loyalty through Loyalzoo, fires campaigns through Mailchimp, and takes orders through first-party Epos Now Delivery and Order & Pay plus a Shopify tie-in for e-commerce.

Pricing #

Epos Now leads with a hardware-bundle promo rather than a published monthly software price, and sells the subscription by quote.

The honest read: the processing economics are the clear part — a flat 2.6% + 10¢ with free refunds and no long-term contract is transparent and small-operator friendly, and the $349 hardware headline is cheap to get started (though it's a rotating promo, not a stable list price). The murky part is the software subscription, which is sold by quote with no public number; operators call it reasonable, but you negotiate it blind. The "no long-term contract" promise is stated for Epos Now Payments specifically — the software subscription's own term isn't published. Large businesses get custom processing rates by quote rather than the flat SMB rate.

Who It's For (and Who It Isn't) #

Good fit: small independent restaurants, cafés, bars, pizza shops, food trucks and quick-service or delivery-led operators who want a low upfront cost, a flat published processing rate, no long-term processing contract, and the freedom to run on an iPad they already own. The in-house payments plus basic inventory and KDS cover a single-site kitchen without paying restaurant-native premiums.

Weaker fit: multi-unit groups and data-driven operators who need deep, configurable reporting and clean multi-location roll-ups — reporting depth is the top gripe. Full-service restaurants that want best-in-class coursing and floor tooling on par with Toast or TouchBistro will find the hospitality workflows broader but shallower, because the platform is built to serve retail and restaurants from the same core. Buyers who want the software subscription priced transparently up front won't get a number without a sales call.

Is It Legit and Worth It? #

Epos Now is an established, independent UK company trading since 2011 with a footprint across 70-plus countries, and it earns a solid 4.6 from 26 reviews on G2 (its Capterra listing is too thin, at three reviews, to lean on). Operators praise ease of use and the value of built-in payments and scanning in one affordable package. It's a legitimate, widely deployed system.

The recurring complaints are worth pricing in before you sign. Fees draw the most friction — operators flag the cost side even with the flat processing rate. Integrations are the next gripe: connecting some third-party tools brings gaps or friction. The mobile app experience comes up repeatedly as rough. And across the POS category, reporting depth is the dominant gap here — the reports are real-time and cover the basics, but data-hungry operators outgrow them. None of these are dealbreakers for a small single-site kitchen, but they're exactly the reasons a growing multi-unit operator eventually migrates up.

Alternatives #

• TouchBistro — iPad POS built only for restaurants, with deeper floor-plan and coursing tooling than a general-purpose till.
• Square for Restaurants — flat, transparent published pricing and a free tier; the simplest path for a café or small QSR.
• Clover — another general-purpose POS with its own processing and an app marketplace, often cross-shopped against Epos Now.
• SpotOn — restaurant POS with competitive processing and strong support for full-service operators.
• Compare the field in our restaurant POS software guide.

Login & Support #

Restaurants sign in through the "Log in" link in the Epos Now site header to reach the account portal. Sales and quotes run through "Get Offer" / "Talk to sales" and the US line at 1-855-434-3767, and payments are applied for inside your Epos Now account.